Retaining SEO Value in Syndicated Content and&nbspPartnerships

The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Link exchanges vs. partnerships

Six years ago, Yahoo! was called out (on this very blog!) for
buying text links. Being the lone SEO at Yahoo! in the US at the time, training, teaching, guiding and policing all of the people involved in over a dozen Yahoo! Media websites, my heart stopped when I saw this post. The thing is, though, I knew the biz dev team at Yahoo! had absolutely no concept of link exchanges for SEO (that said, I have no idea about Great Schools – those were some nice anchor text links).

While most SEOs work on link relationships, most biz dev folks, especially in mid to larger sized online companies, work on business relationships. Every Yahoo! property had biz dev folks who were actively making deals to work with other sites for things like:

Access to complimentary content that Yahoo! didn't have on the site (like the partnership between Yahoo! Real Estate and Great Schools in that example).

Exchanging content or links in hopes of getting more visibility and traffic, like the links to partners Heavy and Bleacher Report at the bottom of Mandatory.com's site.

Most biz dev at Yahoo! was done horribly wrong in the SEO sense actually, with links in JavaScript or content in iFrames, or linking out to more SEO-savvy partners who were nofollowing their links back. So I set out to educate Yahoo! biz devs with the powerful opportunities they were missing with this guide to retaining SEO value in partnerships (updated for today's biz devs). I still use it often for the larger companies I work with, and I hope some of you find it useful for your clients or yourselves as well.

Note that it's very important, whether you're an SEO working with biz devs or you're a biz dev working on partnerships, that the things mentioned below are thoroughly considered before writing and signing a contract with a partner, since some of these things will need to be spelled out in the contract, and oftentimes negotiated.

Any additional ideas are gladly welcome in the comments!

The importance of SEO in partnerships

Search engines follow links across the web to discover and classify content. The content and context of pages linking to each other is taken into consideration in classifying content and surfacing it in search results.

Consider these factors that contribute to a site and/or page's ranking:

Links = votes

Links to a site are treated like votes to the site/page. The quality, quantity and context of the links from one page to another are used by search engines in classifying and ranking a page.

Links = relationships

Any pages linking to each other are related to each other. This can include links in articles, in footers, in content modules and in comments among others. This can be helpful when related content links to each other (on the same site or across different sites). This can be damaging when receiving links from low-quality, spammy sites (typical in link-building) or linking to low-quality or spammy sites (typical in UGC comments).

Syndication = content duplication

Any time the same or very similar content populates the majority of more than one page on the internet, there is a good chance that the duplicates will be hidden from search results. The search engine will attempt to pick/choose the best version of the duplicate for searchers and hide the rest so other content options can appears in the search results.

Search engines can't always determine content source

When there is more than one version of the same content, search engines will try to determine the source and provide that in search results. Oftentimes when content is syndicated, the source does not actually rank first, especially if a small or newer site is syndicating out to larger, older and/or more popular sites with more activity.

Best practices for linking to partners

This depends on the nature of the partnership & competition. Consider what should be written into the contract ahead of time.

Options for linking to competitive content on partner sites (you are trying to rank for/drive traffic for the same thing as the partner):

Don't link: If you don't need to link to the competitive content on the partner site, don't do it.

Add Nofollow: Adding a nofollow tag on the link (in the code) tells search engines that you may not trust what is on the other end of that link, so you're not officially "voting" for it. Not linking to/voting for the partner content can potentially help in preventing it from outranking yours. This may need to be negotiated, since it's possible both parties will want links without a nofollow on it.

JavaScript Links: You can link to the partner with the link in JavaScript code. Search engines often pick up on JavaScript links today, but still more often ignore it (so far).

Options for non-competitive content (you are not trying to rank for/drive traffic for the same thing):

Link freely and naturally, in ways that work best for user experience.

Best practices for getting links from partners

For any inbound links from partners (in articles, content modules, on the site, etc), check how the links will be treated, and make sure the treatment specifications you want are written in the contract. Here are suggested options:

Require a link: Require that the article links back to the original on your site. This can be text link "[Article Title] originally appeared on yoursite.com", with the article title being the hyperlink back to the original article. Make sure the link goes to the original article URL on your site, and not to the home page.

Check the links from their site to yours:

No nofollow tags on links from the partner site to yours: This may need to be negotiated (for the same reasons as we're saying to add nofollows on links from your site to partner sites above). Nofollow tags typically don't pass value to the destination page.

No links in JavaScript: Since links in JavaScript typically aren't crawled and/or utilized in ranking by search engines, links to your site from partners that are in JavaScript wouldn't provide the value to your site/page that a regular crawlable text link would.

No links as images: The best link is a keyword-rich link. A linked image (even if the image is of text), may not be interpreted the same and will often not carry as much weight as a text link. Images may have alt attributes that describe the image (which search engines take into account) but that does not carry as much weight as a regular text link.

No 302 redirects on links: When Google encounters a 302 redirect it keeps the original page in the index and doesn't pass PageRank onto the destination URL (since a 302 redirect is technically a temporary redirect). Do not allow partners to send the link through a 302 redirect to your site.

Keywords in links: When possible, try to have partners link to your page(s) using relevant anchor text. The anchor text of a link provides context for search engines and can help a page rank for that text. For example, if a partner is linking to your article about The Best Geeky Books of 2011, make sure they use the title of the article The Best Geeky Books of 2011 (or something similar and relevant) as the link text rather than something vague like click here or visit our partner (that's not what you want to rank for).

Linking 1:1 relationships: Make sure that links from partner pages go to the most relevant pages on your site. Do not just have them link to your home page. If possible, link to related articles or similar content. This helps provide context for search engines, provides a better experience for users, and can help bring visibility to deeper pages on your site.

Check canonical tags: Check the canonical tag in the head section of the code on the articles you've syndicated to partners. Make sure that canonical points to the article on your site. Otherwise there should ideally be no canonical tag.

Specify linking and redirect rules: Specify rules for what domains should and should not be linking and redirecting to your site. A partner may want to redirect some old domains as part of a package of sites in their network that can send traffic to your site, but this might actually hurt your site's performance in Google. Rankings and traffic should be tested any time a new domain is redirected to the site.

Content sharing/syndication best practices

For content syndicated from your site to a site on another domain or subdomain

Important considerations

Deep linking within your content: When possible (and user-friendly), provide links in your article/blog content to other areas on your site that are referred to in the content. For example, in an article about The San Francisco Giants Suspension of Guillermo Mota on a sports site, link the first mention of Guillermo Mota in the article back to the Guillermo Mota page on your website. Do not overdo it – only provide links where readers might want more information and only the first instance. User experience should always come first.

Absolute URLs: Make sure links in your content that is being syndicated are absolute (full URL) not relative (partial URL). Relative URL links in syndicated content will link back to the partner site, whereas absolute URL links will link back to your site.

No parameters: If possible, do not add parameters onto links in content you're syndicating out. Search engines see parameters as a different URL. If you must use parameters, make sure the correct treatment of parameters is specified in Webmaster Tools.

No link stripping: Make sure the partners are not stripping/removing links that are in your content once it's on their site.

Highly Recommended Considerations (that may need to be negotiated)

Rel=canonical: Require that the partner add the rel=canonical tag to the head of pages specifying the article URL on your site as the canonical. This tells search engines that of these duplicates, the one at your site is the canonical, or primary version.

Publish first: Publish the content you'll be syndicating on your own site before allowing partners to publish it. This can help identify your site as the source (and also generate more links from other sites and social networks).

Limited text syndication: You can allow partners to show a limited amount of text and then have the readers click to view all/more, bringing them to your site. This allows the full article to only live on your site and is also a better traffic driver.

Noindex: Allow the partners to syndicate the content on their site but they must add a noindex tag to the header of those pages on their site. This will allow their site visitors to view and share the content, but the content will not be crawled by search engines.

Links in blog and editorial content being syndicated

Editors: Editors can link straight to the end destination in blog posts and articles (whoever they're linking to has earned it). No special linking rules to follow.

Developers:

Absolute URLs: Make sure all links in content being syndicated out are absolute URLs (the link is the full URL). This way when the article is picked up in other places the link is not broken, and it links back to your site.

Parameters: If using parameters on links (not recommended unless necessary), make sure to specify how Google should treat those parameters in Google Webmaster Tools.

No nofollows: Do not add the nofollow tag to links in content you're syndicating out (if you control the HTML).

Links in user generated content (UGC) on your site

This depends on the nature of the UGC content.

Comment links: Links are ideally not allowed in comments because of the potential for comment spam. If they are allowed they should always have a nofollow tag (placed on the link in the code).

Options for profiles and other UGC content:

If content is not moderated, allow links as text only (not hyperlinked) or not at all.

If content is moderated, links should be ok, but moderators should be trained in how to recognize and combat link spam, as it can easily look like natural linking.

Anchor Text is one of the several Search Entities Google takes into consideration when determining the nature of a web document (in this case both ways: the linked web document nature specified by the anchor text of the link, and the web document linking out because the anchor text is present in a certain consistent context - or not, in case of web spam).

Google never told a text link with keyword by itself is bad. It said that the inappropriate use of it can lead to webspam flagging.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. (Frank Herbert - Dune)

This is a master class of SEO Laura!! Just a question: which is the "limit" in the moderation of the comments with links in forums? If this link is a good information even linking to my blog and selling something... what should do the moderator?

I'm not Laura, but I'll answer from the perspective of being a moderator at Moz and other forums.

All of the comment links at Moz are automatically nofollowed, which hopefully prevents us from getting on the "100 best dofollow blog comment sites" lists and curbs some of the worst spam from the start.

Moz has some automated ways of detecting potential link spam and not publishing the comment until it is reviewed by a moderator. Many times, the accounts end up being banned, or comment deleted and a note written to the author about our blog etiquette standards.

There's a bit of "it depends" that comes next. If the comment is from a member that's been around for quite some time, has a good reputation, and makes a variety of comments (not just ones promoting their own business), it's more likely that the live hyperlink will remain. If the user is new and just leaving their first comment, and they talk about what a great product X is, and they don't disclose a relationship with the company, yet their LinkedIn profile shows them as the head of marketing for company X, they're not even going to get that nofollowed link. Also, they'll likely get a comment from me as a reply asking if they are affiliated with the company and requesting that they make any disclosure for future comments (look at my comment history here, you'll see a bunch of that).

I personally own a forum that promotes a niche hobby, and am one of the moderators on that forum. My husband and I run a business that serves that niche hobby, and we only have one or two main competitors in North America. I almost never leave a link back to our company site (and if I do, I leave it just as a text link, not a hyperlink). It's a small niche, most people know who I am and what business we run. I want it to be the place for people to come and be able to discuss the hobby, and don't want to turn away people by making it seem like it's one big advertisement every time I post. In this case, it's not about whether I'm linking in the eyes of Google, but the trust of the users.

There's a lot of "it depends". Some of it boils down to "what does this look like to other people using the site?", in my opinion.

There are several signals that may be used to determine original source, like who published first (more specifically, where did Google find it first), where do all of the links go to, where does the canonical point to, who is the author (if it's connected to G+) and is that author connected to the domain, etc. Check this out from Matt Cutts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J3q9UKwCvM

Hi Laura, while I agree with you Google has many signals to identify the source for it's SERPS, this data appears to be irrelevant to a Panda. Panda I suspect looks for syndicate networks... have too many connections and you get whacked (unless you are a massive brand).

With the recent and ever present comments from Matt Cutts, webmasters are more scared than ever to link out to other websites even though links are still a powerful ranking factor in Search. It is important to promote content but be sure to do it in a reasonable way. Buying links, spamming comments and exact matching anchor text at every turn is why Matt Cutts went on the offensive with linking and guest posting.

Webmasters still need to link because, as you mentioned, its how the web works. Link as much as you feel comfortable and link when necessary. A natural link profile - a solid mix of no follow, follow, branded, exact match and random links - are key to what it takes to rank in the SERPs nowadays.

Hi Marios, from my experience working for a technology publisher it doesn't always work that way. It could be that one of my coworkers spots a post that is close to going viral worldwide. But as long as the 'original' has been posted on a small blog it could take a couple of hours for Google to have it indexed. So that's why we would syndicate it first and still point back at the original. Because it could be that the 'momentum' of the post is already gone when the post was indexed. For smaller blogs where 'momentum' is not an issue your way could be the way to go!

Are you sure "No links as images: The best link is a keyword-rich link." It works now. As I am not sure because I have read that excessive use of keyword rich links can impact your website's rank. I think it looks natural to use the link from images. What do you think?

Yep Yatindra - both work. Maybe "no links as images" should be "try to use text when possible". In my experience, all things equal, a text link is more desirable than an alt text link (though both do work).

Excessive use, especially with backlink patterns that look unnatural, is definitely not great. For instance, widgets that all have the same backlink text being picked up and spread across irrelevant sites < ick.

But say I've got a deal with adoption.com where I'm syndicating my domestic adoption and international adoption guides out to adoption.com, in a module somewhere on their site, in hopes of getting some of the people browsing adoption.com to notice the guides and come over to my site and read my guides and get to know who I am and the helpful adoption information I provide. That module has three links to articles on my site. I want those links, most likely, to be the names of the guides, like "Guide to International Adoption" or "How to Adopt Internationally" or something of that matter. BUT you're right, some methods of content sharing or getting backlinks can be really unnatural - you have to be careful not to get lazy with it :)

This post is a bit confusing. I think it should have been categorized in a better way though.

Anyways as you mentioned source and syndicator relationship, if by chance the source site took a little longer to get indexed in google and syndicator one is quick at getting itself indexed in google, what would be the scenario then?

We have been discussing blog syndication a lot internally lately and this post was a big help, thanks!

We have noticed that google treats our blog at a syndicated source instead of the original for almost all of our blog posts. We have since stopped syndication, and asked all of the syndicating website to change the canonical tags to point back to the original articles, one refused so we asked that they remove the canonical tag and place a link back to the original post.

Is there a way to 'tell' google who the original/syndicate are retroactively? Or as you put it "the one who brakes the story gets the links" (even though in fact we "broke' the story...)

As far as I know, the way to tell Google is the canonical tag. Though some of the folks that hang out here at Moz may have some other ideas? It's not uncommon for the place(s) you syndicate out to to have stronger PageRank, link profiles, etc., making it hard to compete against.

Publishing first (let them publish the next day), getting a source link (and you can also have links to other related or most recent articles on your site from the syndicated content), and that canonical tag are typically a good way to start. You could ask them to noindex the content, so their users can enjoy it but it doesnt compete with your content in SERPS. If they wont canonical I doubt they'll do that.

It's a bit of a tricky game - these negotiations. Best to do it up front, because giving and then taking away is never fun for anyone.

as you know many of directory websites use iframe code and copy exactly your website content , So google cant see the links and your content become some Stolen Meta tags and information that help the directory to crawl + iframe code . Yes ! we all know Google dont hate iframe and it will get us some visitors or somehow doing branding for us but come on :) No REAL VISITORS and Google Rank even there is lots of chance to get in penalty or having new crawling problems . ps if its a branding its just branding our own post so its a lose for us.

There is some better ways but most of blogers or webmaster just dont see them.directories use pubsubhubbub and other methods so all the answers will be on how you index your content ps some small items.if you do this right , They are done :)

Hi Laura, I am not sure why you are recommending syndication post Panda. I am only just catching up with SEO (having been out 6 years) and my site has a few dupe press articles but all of these show as the source. It was hit in the first Panda to the last Panda. I have only just removed this "duplicate" content 4 years later. I hardly want to read that syndication is a good idea - I think it is bad advice!

I'd say over-syndicating your content without any regard to watering down your copy is a problem for everyone, the little guys suffer from plights of instant gratification with it. "What should I do with this content I just spent 2 days writing?" "I wrote this great blog post 5 months ago and got no incoming traffic from it". Misguided solution: spread it around as much as possible, the only issue is that no thought to any SEO best practices are giving to it at all. By the time someone with sense of what should be what gets a look - it's a rats nest of duplicate content. It's probably not be beyond saving but you might have just wasted a lot of time and energy and set your campaign back by 6 months.

It's a scary job trying to integrate seo and business development and one of the main problems that you will face is once you tell developers something, they take it as verbatim. If for example you say use text links rather than image links, developers would insist on this, they are a very special breed indeed. The end result is that your run the risk of having a link profile that is skewed towards text rather than image links and would end up looking unnatural. I would advise that you keep an eye on the metrics!

One time at Yahoo I had mentioned to a developer creating new content, that, in addition to the page title, you'll probably want to repeat the keywords a few times on the the page. It was "repeat the keywords" that the developer heard. I saw the finished page right before it was set to launch, and the body copy of the page was repeated over and over again several times on the page. Best verbatim mixup ever (and I'm so glad that didnt launch).

Anyway - you're right that some devs do take you by your word. Spending 50% of your time educating as you go is just as important as the initial recommendations. Good communication is *so key* in a good SEO/client working relationship. And if they're tough - beer is the secret weapon. :D

Good Article Finding good authoritative content partners is essential to SEO now days. Plus if the partnering is done correctly the traffic generated to your site will generate revenue that's where the strategic part comes in. At the end of the day it's all about revenue generated.

Very knowledgeable blog. I think If we have syndicate issue in blog, Google understand this and show only one of them on SERP. There are many examples of sites with syndicated work that rank high in competitive markets.

"Keywords in links: When possible, try to have partners link to your page(s) using relevant anchor text. The anchor text of a link provides context for search engines and can help a page rank for that text."

In my experience, sites (pages really) that benefit the most from social links are news-related sites, posts, articles. The stuff that has a big reliance on freshness. More stale stuff, like law firm sites especially, seem to benefit more from regular links, maybe on-site engagement too, than from social sharing (with the exception of articles/posts on stale sites). For example, social shares of TMZ.com content, in my opinion, are one of the most important ranking factors. Social shares of law services pages on a law firm site, in my opinion, have little to no clout.

Interesting. I've noticed this too, but the big thing now in legal is to be more newsy than straight law firm site, with regular news postings. One of the sites listed in the article is called NewsInferno.com and a lot of the postings point to news oriented pages.

Just curious, are you suggesting that Google Bing differentiate a site by looking at it or by the content posted?

It does lose the SEO value, but if you hand spin it back on your site then it works in my experience. One thing I have noticed is if I have a piece of content on a high authority site, it does not actually help me that much as far as SEO value. But the leads that it does help with are much higher quality than the general leads that come in. The way I look at the hand spinning is that you are trying for more than one link (even if it is on another site) in the SERP's for the same phrase.

I work with enterprise-sized clients who's partners nofollow all citations back to the source all the time (the typical situation). I've seen clients who hire companies who promise to syndicate their content to relevant places to get them more brand visibility and traffic, and then duplicate the client content on previously parked domains, which 200 despite meta refresh redirecting all of the previously parked domains to another one of their domains that was previously payday loan content with spammy links still existing to it, but they ported over "relevant" content last minute, and that site javascript redirected to the client... And they were (are) a big company and doing this to several very, very large clients (some of the biggest names on the web). And their biz dev people had no idea - they were just expecting to get some help launching new sub brands and getting them some exposure ... having no idea what they got themselves into and no clue what any of this SEO implications were.

--- Biz dev is a very different game than SEO. A lot of these business degree guys and gals dont have the slightest idea how the business development between online partners can affect their sites. It's typically at the enterprise level - sites that have entire business development teams - so may be out of the scope of some of the folks here not working with the behemoths.